Desk or drawing
board where your arm will be able to make large
circular movements freely without obstruction.
(Computer desk's keyboard shelf may be too small
and low)

The freehand
style of skecthing:

The freehand style
of sketching is different from the way most people
draw. If you ask a non-artist to draw a circle,
they will try to draw one circle with one line,
slowly and calculated, at an attempt to make a
perfect circle. The freehand style of sketching is
the opposite:

First,
hold the pencil two to three inches away from the
tip. Then, draw circles on top of each other really
fast, over and over till it starts to look like
there is a good circle some where in
there.

The same applies to
ellipses.

To draw straight
lines, hold your pencil far away from the tip, then
you practice "gliding" over the piece of paper" to
see if you got your start and finishing points
right, then you land the tip and drag the pencil
lightly over the paper. If you twitch or miss the
end point of the intended line, try
again.

The same applies to
"S" curves.

Before you start
drawing humans and animals:

We strongly suggest
you practice drawing ellipses, circles and straight
lines. To do this, spend an hour each day ( we know
it is a lot but highly effective) drawing these
before you start your art work. The way most
proffessionals practice this warm up procedure is
they take a large sheet of white paper and start
filling it with circles ( using the freehand
sketching style), one overlapping the next by a
half an inch. They fill the sheet with about 1000
circles, then they move to ellipses.